To the Editor:
I recently read a piece in The Daily Reporter about the impact that repealing Any Willing Provider Laws would have on our state’s healthcare prices. I was shocked to learn about an old law on the books that artificially sets low hospital standards, creating higher costs and lower quality care for patients. Our laws should incentivize providing the best possible care at the lowest possible prices. Indiana must do something to encourage competition between hospital systems once again.
Unfortunately, the current system incentives hospitals to provide the bare minimum of quality care while keeping their margins high. Any Willing Provider Laws mandate that health plans accept all legally licensed providers into their network. Currently in Indiana, healthcare plans cannot consider patient safety records or performance when building their network. Any medical provider, no matter its cost or quality of care, has state-mandated, guaranteed entry into any healthcare plan network. This creates an anti-competitive marketplace, or lack thereof, which has caused rising prices for all patients.
Any Willing Provider laws are hurting all Hoosiers who pay out-of-pocket for medical expenses before they hit their deductible, along with businesses across Indiana who self-fund their employees health plans. Companies small and large are having additional costs put upon them for their employees’ healthcare plans because the state forces our patients and business owners to foot the bill to maintain hospitals’ low standards of entry.
What is most shameful is that for all the money Hoosiers are putting into their healthcare system, they are not getting nearly the quality of service that other states receive despite far lower costs. Half of Indiana’s hospitals ranked “C” or lower in a national ranking on patient safety according to consumer watchdog Leapfrog Group. The same study found that Indiana ranked in the bottom half of the country for hospital safety at 27th overall despite having the 7th-highest hospital costs in the nation.
A major reason why our safety rankings are so low while our costs remain so high is because of anti-competitive Any Willing Provider laws. In theory, Any Willing Providers were supposed to provide patients with more options for care. But after so much hospital consolidation and government intervention into the marketplace, most patients have been left with just a few bad options in their times of need. We need to inject competition back into the marketplace to allow the best medical providers to rise up rather than protect the profit margins of the hospitals benefiting from government mandates.
Repealing Any Willing Provider laws would not impact patients ability to access any care of their choosing. Members would still be able to visit out-of-network providers, but there would be a financial incentive to visit in-network providers through lower copays and coinsurance. This would allow Hoosiers to only pay for the healthcare they need through whichever hospital and healthcare plan they are most comfortable with.
With the Statehouse returning to session in the near future, I encourage all legislators to consider a full repeal of existing Any Willing Provider laws. These laws raise healthcare costs for Hoosier patients and business owners while shielding bad medical actors from facing consequences for high prices and poor care. Indiana should get to the root of the problem and let the private market work to lower healthcare costs for everyone.
Andrew Boyle
New Palestine
